I am the admin for roughly 35 blackberry users. We have a 2 year contract with a carrier. the first year all the phones were covered under a warranty. now we have a few months left on our contract but phones seem to be dropping like flies. some literally and some just have random issues. I've been buying refurbished ones but this is getting costly. What do other admins do for replacement after the phones no longer fall under the warranty.

I need some ideas so i don't find myself in this same position 2 years from now.

Well considering the abuse mobile phone take .. your lucky to get 2 years out of them.

I oversee 3,500 mobile devices and we actively monitor device models and rotate models that have gone end of life every 6 months. Presently our goal was any device capable of running OS 4.1 as the minimum and going into next year it will be devices that support OS 4.5 or higher. You want to offer users the ability to use the latest functionality of the BES.

It's somewhat like a PC refresh cylce.

With your size deployment it will be hard to get better terms from your carrier on the pricing front but I'd try and keep them all on the same carrier and update everyone in the same timeframe so you can get the best ROI. I've had a number of our carriers send special pricing for the current 8830/Curve lines as they are being blown out of the channel before new models so now is a good time to form a plan.